doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9299.2009.01804.x A COMMENT ON MARSH AND MCCONNELL: TOWARDS A FRAMEWORK FOR ESTABLISHING POLICY SUCCESS MARK BOVENS ESTABLISHING POLICY SUCCESSES: THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN LOCUS AND FOCUS The paper by Marsh and McConnell published in this volume is an important and innovative contribution to the debate about policy evaluation. Besides a careful discussion of the literature on assessing policy successes, a major value of the paper is its addition of the process dimension to the framework that has been developed by Paul ‘t Hart, Guy Peters and myself. I would like to suggest that the paper could take this heuristic innovation even further by distinguishing more clearly between ‘process’ assessment and ‘outcome’ assessment. Process, programmatic and political, the three ‘p’s’ in the paper and in figure 1, are analytically not on the same level, in spite of the attractive alliteration. The authors treat them as three equivalent dimensions of policy success. However, the programmatic and political assessments, as introduced by Bovens et al. (2001), were both ways of looking at the outcomes of a policy, whereas the process assessment, as introduced by Marsh and McConnell, is, indeed, assessing the processes that lead to the adoption of the policy. What is more important, both the policy process and the policy outcomes can be assessed in programmatic and political terms, respectively. It may be helpful therefore to distinguish between the ‘locus’, the object, and the ‘focus’, the perspective, of policy evaluation instead of using the unilateral concept of ‘dimension’. Marsh and McConnell have made a significant innovation by adding another locus, another important element to be studied when assessing the success or failure of a particular policy. However, I would argue that, just as in assessing the outcomes of an implemented policy, this object, the process that led to the adoption of the policy, can be assessed both from a programmatic and from a political perspective. In our earlier work we distinguished between programmatic and political failures and successes in order to have a more sophisticated and politically sensitive framework for policy evaluation. The programmatic perspective on success and failure is rooted in the traditional rational-synoptic analysis of policy-making. It assesses policies in terms of policy objectives and goal achievement. The political perspective is rooted in a power- based analysis of policy-making and it assesses success and failure in terms of political casualties and spoils. I would argue that, likewise, the process that led to the adoption of a policy can also be analysed both from a programmatic and from a political perspective. In fact, the authors are doing just that when they discuss the process dimension. A policy process can be seen as a ‘programmatic’ success when the legislative process ‘leaves the main direction and detailed instruments of the policy intact’ (p. 16), and when the policy bill is adapted by Mark Bovens is Professor of Public Administration and Research Director at the Utrecht School of Governance. Public Administration Vol. 88, No. 2, 2010 (584–585)  2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.